Mother of teen devastated by news of body found

Tuesday, May 13, 2003 | 9:36 a.m.

The mother of a former Las Vegas teen whose body turned up in a Colorado wheat field after he was missing for three months said Monday she was "devastated" by the discovery and doesn't know what might have happened.

Gloria Cerniglia of Las Vegas said the body of her son, Shawn Cerniglia, 16, of Highlands Ranch, Colo., was found May 6 in a wheat field in Aurora, about 25 miles east of Denver. Alongside his body were the remains of a woman.

The bodies had not been positively identified and an official cause of death had not been determined Monday, the Adams County coroner said.

But the Douglas County Sheriff's Office is operating on the premise that the bodies are Cerniglia, who was a Cheyenne High School freshman until 2001, and his girlfriend, Carrie Heiden, 18. Foul play is suspected, sheriff's deputies said.

The teens had not been seen since they left their homes in the Aurora suburb of Highlands Ranch on Feb. 5.

Earlier that day, Douglas County detectives had called the 16-year-old's home to talk to him about a drive-by shooting that had occurred in September, police said.

Three people are in custody in connection with the shooting, and authorities have said they believe the shooting was retribution for the theft of a safe, according to published reports in Colorado.

But more information about that case was not available Monday because the Douglas County district attorney recently had those records sealed by the court, officials said.

Gloria Cerniglia was divorced from Shawn's father in Las Vegas in 1996, according to court records. She said Shawn had lived with her until this year, then moved to Highlands Ranch to live with his father and his stepmother.

Aurora is a sprawling rural community in Colorado, and parts of it are in Douglas County and Adams County. The Adams County coroner is handling the medical examination because the farm where the bodies were found is in Adams. The bodies were found just 100 feet from a paved road amid wheat that was about a foot high, police said.

The Douglas County Sheriff's Office is in charge of the investigation of the apparent slayings because the teens were reported missing from Douglas County and Shawn's partially burned car was found in Douglas County on Feb. 6.